VOL, 11. 



FLINT, MICHIfiM, MARCH 10, If 



NO. 3, 



Italians Take the Lead in Beauty, Gentle- 

 ness and Industry. 



E. M. HAYHUEST. 



f PREFER the Italians on account of 

 their disposition, good looks and indus- 

 try. ~ I have yet to be convinced that 

 docility and beauty are incompatible 

 with thrift and industry. By Italians, I mean 

 the highly bred, pure strains which we now 

 have in this country; not the ordinary im- 

 ported stock. Where intelligently cultivated, 

 these strains prove to be extremely beauti- 

 ful, gentle, and most industrious; the three 

 qualities most to be desired in bees. They 

 have other good qualities, but. as I look at it, 

 these are side issues hardly worth consider- 

 ing when comparing Italians with other va- 

 rieties, in which any one of the above are 

 wanting. Our native blacks, or rather brown 

 bees, in their purity, are quite docile; but 

 they lack the beauty and enterprise of the 

 Italians. I have known cases where strong 

 colonies of these bees were loafing listlessly 

 about their hives in a starving condition, 

 while my Italians were making a fair living. 

 As far as my experience goes, crosses often 

 inherit the industry of the better variety, but 

 generally without the quietness, and it re- 

 quires "eternal vigilence" to keep that indus- 

 try from being misdirected. I have often 

 had my attention called to enormous yields 

 from individual colonies of hybrids, in 

 which a careful examination would show 

 that the honey was stolen from other hives. 

 A friend once stated to me that, the worst that 

 can be said against the Italians is, they 

 do not cap their honey so immaculately 

 white as do the pure blacks. It appears that 

 this is due to the fact that they fill their cells 

 full of honey, while the blacks leave a small 

 space between the cap and the honey. This 

 cannot affect the taste of the honey, and I 

 have heard a number of persons say that 

 they admired the rich appearance of comb 

 honey stored by the Italians. Can we not 

 educate most of our customers to such a pref- 

 erence? But suppose that we cannot, and 

 have to sell our honey for a trifle less, be- 

 cause it lacks the snowy whiteness: admit 

 that the statement is true, that the Kansas 

 City market makes ^2 cent difference be- 

 tween the work of the Italians and blacks, 

 this would amount to only s.")0 on a crop of 

 10,000 pounds. Now, I would willingly lose 

 this amount for the satisfaction of working 



with my gentle beauties, and I believe they 

 would very much more than make it up in 

 increased yield. While I keep bees largely 

 for the money that there is in them, I also 

 have an eye for beauty: and would much 

 rather handle a colony of handsome, golden 

 Italians, instead of blacks, simply for the 

 sake of said "eye." I have never seen the 

 Carniolans. 

 Kansas City, Mo., Feb. 20, 1889. 



Italians Great Workers, but Poor Designers. 



T. F. BINGHAM. 



lARLY in the "(jO's," Italian bees gave 

 much trouble by their persistency in 

 building combs, and storing honey, 

 around and above hanging, or Lang- 

 stroth, frames. This tendency led me to the 

 construction of closed-end frames, and to the 

 discarding of a honey board. The trouble 

 was not a small one,^ as, unless pieces of 

 comb starters, reaching like ladders to the 

 top of the surplus boxes, were used, the 

 bees could not be readily induced to cluster 

 in the top of the box and construct regu- 

 lar and handsome combs. They not only 

 persisted in building comb in the shallow 

 space around the frames, but alf o reared an 

 Egyptian pyramid up into the surplus boxes, 

 having cells radiating to all points of the 

 compass. This not only injured our surplus 

 and sales, but it rendered the honey-board 

 and frames almost immovable after a 

 season's long flow. 



Had Mr. Langstroth had only Italian bees, 

 he would probably have invented closed-end 

 frames, and had no occasion to use a honey- 

 board, neither would he have had so large a 

 hive in one section. 



Italian bees carry this tendency to store 

 honey close around the brood, to all imagin- 

 able extremes: often filling the brood 

 frames almost solid with sealed honey: no 

 matter how much room is given above, they 

 will not transfer it to the boxes. Here the ex- 

 tractor came to the rescue, and circumvent- 

 ed again this instinct, as did the closed-end 

 frames. 



One other feature, also, in the early days 

 of the Italians, militated largely against 

 them: viz., the second generation was so 

 largely made up of hybrids, having uncon- 

 trollable tempers. 



The absolute necessity of smoke, in almost 

 unlimited quantities, to control the hybrids, 



